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	Everyone out of Step on Sexuality, except the Archbishop Irish Times November 9, 2010 http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/1109/1224282959683.html EUROPEAN DIARY: The leader of the Catholic Church in Belgium thinks everyone is wrong, apart from himself, on issues from homosexuality to child abuse by priests, writes ARTHUR BEESLEY BELGIAN TELEVISION showed grainy video footage over the weekend of a man throwing a pie in the face of the country's Catholic leader, Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard. The incident came amid mounting disquiet within the church and outside it over the conservative primate's views on Aids, homosexuality and abuser priests. It happened at an All Saints' Day Mass in Brussels, at the beginning of what turned out to be a very bad week for the archbishop. A legal complaint for discrimination against homosexuals was filed against him in Bruges and his official spokesman resigned, only three months into the job. As Belgian Catholics come to terms with the emergence of a litany of child abuse in their church, its leader's doctrinaire outlook seems increasingly out of step. Léonard's views are well-known and can hardly be said to be glaringly at odds with those of his superiors in Rome. As he plods from controversy to controversy, however, he has become a figure of ridicule in the eyes of his critics and faces demands to resign. Hundreds of abuse cases have come to light, gravely damaging the church's standing, but the archbishop has compounded its troubles with a succession of authoritarian remarks which raise questions about his own moral viewpoint. He claims he has been misinterpreted, but it seems there are limits to his compassion. A man who has no qualms describing Aids as a form of "intrinsic justice" has questioned the merits of prosecuting abuser priests who have retired from pastoral life. When Dr Léonard became head of the Belgian church at the start of this year it was widely acknowledged that he was more hardline than his predecessor, Cardinal Godfried Danneels. The detail of the abuse scandal that soon blew up reflects well on neither man. The bishop of Bruges, Dr Roger Vangheluwe, resigned in April after admitting repeated sexual abuse of a nephew. While it later emerged that the cardinal urged the victim not to make public his complaint, the case prompted a flood of calls to an independent commission. Issuing its report in September, the inquiry reported 475 cases between the 1950s and the 1980s and said no congregation escaped sexual abuse of minors. Among the victims there were 13 suicides. Another 103 cases have since emerged. Dealing with an affair of this magnitude – with the wounds of abuse victims still raw – would test even the most gifted of leaders. Yet while Dr Léonard expressed anger and alarm at the report's findings, he did not issue a direct apology on behalf of the church. Victims were angered. In recent weeks he has been mired in further controversy. He was accused of inciting people to hatred when a new Flemish translation of a book of interviews brought fresh attention to his views on Aids. In the book – first published in French in 2006, long before he became primate – he drew parallels between Aids and the consequences of environmental damage. "I do not see this illness as a punishment, at most a sort of inherent justice, a bit like how we are presented with the bill for what we do to the environment," he said. Faced with a cascade of criticism, he called a press conference to say he did not regard Aids in all its forms as punishment, but was referring to promiscuous sex. It was akin to the link between smoking and lung cancer, he said. "If someone gets lung cancer from smoking, the cancer is a sort of inherent justice. The actions, consciously done, have a result." It would not be his last clarification. Not long afterwards, he described the prosecution of elderly priests who committed abuse as a vengeful act. Priests must be made aware of what they did, he said. But if they were no longer working he was not sure "that exercising a sort of vengeance that will have no concrete result is humane". He later said he had been misunderstood and that he believed paedophile priests should be brought to justice. The archbishop described homosexual love as a travesty of nature, but later denied implying that homosexuals were abnormal. By way of an explanation, he said "there is in the homosexual tendency and practice, an orientation that is not coherent with the objective logic of sexuality". It was all too much for Jurgen Mettepenningen, the 35-year-old theologian who became the archbishop's spokesman in August. Having urged Dr Léonard to stop speaking in public until Christmas to calm the storm, he stepped down last week when it became clear that the prelate would not stay quiet. "Archbishop Léonard has sometimes acted like someone who's driving against the traffic and thinks everyone else is wrong," Mr Mettepenningen said. Describing his lack of trust in the prelate, he said he was not a serious leader and had a "surreal attitude" towards the controversies he had stirred up.
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